


you imagined, from other stories you've read, that you know it well  [but they flattered you]

by postcardmystery



Series: infinite london [2]
Category: Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms, Sherlock Holmes (Downey films)
Genre: Drug Use, M/M, Mental Breakdown, Mental Health Issues, Murder, Self-Harm, Suicide, Suicide Attempt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-15
Updated: 2012-10-15
Packaged: 2017-11-16 09:33:04
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,686
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/538030
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/postcardmystery/pseuds/postcardmystery
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Once, he haunted London, but now London is haunting him, footsteps in the dark and the clack clack clack of a phantom stagecoach, girls with dark smiles in filthy corsets, girls who can’t be real, pickpockets not yet ten, cockney thugs in bowler hats, knives up their sleeves and gloves of tattered leather on their hands, he closes his eyes and he opens them and they’re still there, more than shadows, less than ghosts, their bodies solid and hot, and they see him and he sees them, and sometimes when he looks down those aren’t his clothes, but they are, but.</p><p>The contemporary and the Victorian begin to bleed at their boundaries.</p>
            </blockquote>





	you imagined, from other stories you've read, that you know it well  [but they flattered you]

**Author's Note:**

> Trigger warnings for suicide, murder, self-harm, and drug abuse.

  
_Sometimes the silences, the gaps, tell us more than anything else._

_London goes beyond any boundary or convention. It contains every wish or word ever spoken, every action or gesture ever made, every harsh or noble statement ever expressed. It is illimitable. It is Infinite London._

― Peter Ackroyd

  
  
Behind the the bricks of Victoria Station, something lurks, if he could just push the bricks just right, if he could just get his fingers, rubbed raw and bleeding, through the cracks, if he could just slide behind to where voices chatter, voices with accents that chime wrong but pierce right, behind the bricks, where the smoke and the gas lamps and the mud waits for him, waits always-- “Have you lost you Oyster Card, again?” says Watson, as Holmes presses his nose against the red bricks, “Move it, if we stand here any longer we’re going to get moved on for loitering, come on, weirdo.”  
  
  
  
  
Once, he haunted London, but now London is haunting  _him_ , footsteps in the dark and the clack clack clack of a phantom stagecoach, girls with dark smiles in filthy corsets, girls who  _can’t_  be real, pickpockets not yet ten, cockney thugs in bowler hats, knives up their sleeves and gloves of tattered leather on their hands, he closes his eyes and he opens them and they’re still there, more than shadows, less than ghosts, their bodies solid and hot, and they see him and he sees them, and sometimes when he looks down those aren’t his clothes, but they are,  _but_.  
  
  
  
  
“You’ve got a postcard,” says Watson, frowning, “but it’s not from your brother.”  
  
“Of course not,” says Holmes, his chin on Watson’s shoulder, Watson in his armchair, “look at the handwriting, Mycroft doesn’t loop or dip like that. No imagination to, poor chap.”  
  
“But it’s signed with an ‘M’,” says Watson, “who else would be pretentious enough to--”  
  
Holmes plucks the postcard from Watson’s hand, says, “Well, let’s find out.”  
  
  
  
  
The postcards come and keep coming, always a postmark from inside London, never a greater clue than a first-class stamp and an M in perfect copperplate, hoarded under their bed, in a huge, unruly pile, unearthed when they fuck at night, pieces of paper sliding out from beneath them, to stick to Watson’s feet in the morning, a frown on his face but his hands are kind, and he wishes for a box of matches, for a can of petrol whenever Watson frowns, because,  _because_ , and he glances out the window to the street below, and a young girl in ragged crinoline stands beneath a gas lamp in the early morning smog, waves.  
  
  
  
  
“Just tell me where you were last night,” says Lestrade, “and then we can leave.”  
  
“The moon,” says Holmes, a fingernail on a violin string, “Berlin, the fifth dimension, Narnia, oh, and Manchester.”  
  
“At least two of those are actual possibilities, son,” says Lestrade, his hand coming to rest on Holmes’ wrist, “just answer the question so you’re cleared as a suspect, yeah? Do me a favour, it’s been a long day.”  
  
“We were here all night,” says Watson, his feet in Holmes’ lap, “and that’s all you’re getting.”  
  
Holmes smiles, his teeth white and glinting, says, “Ignore him, the devil’s in the detail, is he not, Inspector? We started in here, I on my knees, Watson’s--”  
  
“Yeah, okay, you’ve made your point,” says Lestrade hurriedly, “we might need you boys this week, so try and keep him central London, will you, Doctor?”  
  
“No promises,” says Watson, and Holmes plays a demented aria until Lestrade leaves, a weary smile on his face.  
  
“The Inspector might have a point,” says Watson, as Holmes slumps onto his shoulder, “where  _were_  you last night?”  
  
“Oh,” says Holmes, yawning hugely, waving a hand, “around.”  
  
  
  
  
There is ice beneath his feet that will soon be slush, snowflakes in his hair and deep brown mud on his shoes, he’s been walking for hours but he never gets lost, because the streets and roads of London are mysterious but they cannot ever be mysterious, not to him, not to Sherlock Holmes, and the air does not shimmer, he does not blink and miss it, there is nothing romantic about this, nothing romantic about a red bus one moment and a crash of horse-drawn carts the next, and he looks up, and up, and up, to a street sign that is grey with dirt and a purple sky, down to his boots that are still muddy and to the trickling blood of a horse for which nothing waits but a shotgun if it’s lucky and a knife if it’s not, looks to his hands and they are steady, too steady, chemical-burnt and the fingernails ragged and  _his_ , and this is wrong and he knows it, but it doesn’t  _feel_  wrong, not the smoke in the air or the woolen gloves on his hands or the shadows that he’s standing in, darker than he’s used to, except for how they aren’t, and.  
  
  
  
  
“I rather liked that one,” says Watson, as Holmes heaves sloppy paint over a charcoal drawing on their living room wall, and Holmes laughs and says, “I was bored with it.”  
  
“But it was the first one you ever did,” says Watson, his eyes narrowing a little, and Holmes says, “I only ever did them to get you to notice me, dear boy. Mission accomplished.”  
  
“They why,” says Watson, “are you doing more?”  
  
“One must never be boring,” says Holmes, paint in his hair and black smeared across his face, “it is the only cardinal sin.”  
  
“Have you  _met_  you?” says Watson, and Holmes kisses him because he can’t not, leaving fingerprints of grey on Watson’s shirt and face and chest, an ownership more complete than any of the murky drawings Holmes leaves for Watson’s eyes, and Watson’s eyes alone.  
  
  
  
  
Lestrade is the first to change, a pocket-watch, a truncheon, a pristine bowler hat, his accent the same but rougher, the streets of his childhood running wild through his vowels, and Holmes blinks and he’s still there, a starched collar and a snipped beard, a vicious grin and a cosh in his pocket, and Holmes blinks and he’s still there, and Holmes blinks, and blinks, and blinks.  
  
  
  
  
The body is bloated and smells like the river and all that lies beneath, and Holmes stands, the cuffs of his trousers rolled up, his bare feet in the filthy waters of the Thames, and says, “Why did you require me, again?”  
  
“We didn’t,” says Lestrade, his hat in a gloved hand, his sleeves rolled up and his waistcoat off, and Holmes looks down and away as Watson says, “They needed  _me_ , remember?”  
  
“God knows why you’re paddling in that cesspool,” says Lestrade, his tie askew and Holmes’ fingers itch to straighten it,  _but_ , so he just says, “I’ve had every bacterium in me that you can care to name, and quite a few you can’t, Inspector, dear.”  
  
Watson shrugs, pulling his latex gloves off, says, “He’s not wrong, to be honest.”  
  
“Sleeping with me is about as risky as jumping in the Thames with your mouth open, but my good Watson does it anyway,” says Holmes, with a horrible grin, and Watson shoves him, laughs when he lands in the freezing water with his mouth still open, pushes him away when Holmes gets back up and tries to kiss him, kisses him on the forehead anyway, because Holmes is shivering and won’t  _ask_  to be held, the way he never does, and Watson winks at Lestrade when Holmes presses his face into Watson’s neck, because Holmes is still shaking and both of their clothes are wet and Watson’s hands were just inside a corpse, but Holmes wants him anyway, if anything, only wants him  _more_.  
  
  
  
  
Irene comes next, net and velvet on her auburn hair, her face arsenic white, the skin powdered and alien and her lips red, a curving smile that hasn’t changed, and when he puts his hands on her ribcage he feels the bones of her corset there, the knives that lie beneath, and her hair is long and curling and he runs a hand through it, knows he shouldn’t, but she just smiles, takes his hand in hers, the lace of her gloves harsh against his skin, and even as he presses his lips to her palm she tastes wrong, like soot and French perfume and decay, and he loves her, he  _always_  loves her, even this Irene with her long dress and her accent that isn’t quite the same, whispers of Mark Twain about the edges, he still loves her because he can’t help but love her, because she is London still, dark and bloodstained and not quite his, but it’s a bitter sort of love, a love he can’t quite hold, a love that hurts him in the morning, a love embroidered with something not quite right, and he loves her, of course he does, but which Irene is she, which Irene does he love, which  _London_?  
  
  
  
  
“You need to take your pills,” says Watson, and there’s lipstick on the bathroom mirror and blood on the floor, glass in Holmes’ arm and nothing but misery in Watson’s smile, and Watson’s right, he’s always right, but Holmes just says, “I need to do a lot of things, it does not mean I  _shall_.”  
  
  
  
  
Winter is turning into spring and the postcards keep coming, the same handwriting, the same postmarks, the same  _M_ , the pile under their bed growing and growing and growing, postcards ripped at the edges, Holmes’ hands all over them, never finding an answer, never learning more, and he’s starting to wonder if that’s because there’s nothing there to learn, if the postcards aren’t real and this other London  _is_ , a London where Lestrade has tobacco under his hat-ribbon and Irene has a knife in her garter, but then there’s Watson, tea in the mornings and his Doc Martens on, polished where Holmes’ are always scuffed, and Watson is still the same so maybe the postcards are real, maybe there is no London-Other, and Holmes looks out the window, to the girl in the fog, and wonders which is worse.  
  
  
  
  
“For me?” says Watson, wearing the fond smile that means Holmes has done something utterly barmy again, something that no one else could ever find endearing, and he presses the wilting flower into Watson’s hand, says, “It’s Valentine’s Day, isn’t it?”  
  
“You  _hate_  Valentine’s Day,” says Watson, slipping the flower into the buttonhole of his suit, (smart, there’s court today, and Holmes will sit outside in the hallways of the courts and watch and learn and watch and learn until Watson comes to get him or the security guards do, whoever comes first), and Holmes shrugs, and Watson says, “Come to think of it, so do I.”  
  
“But you don’t hate your daisy,” says Holmes, matter of fact, and Watson laughs, says, “No, I suppose I don’t. Where did you get it from, anyway?”  
  
“Over there,” says Holmes, pointing to an empty alleyway, and Watson says, still with that fond smile, “Fine, yeah, okay, you don’t have to tell me, Batman, let’s get a move on, then.”  
  
  
  
  
He doesn’t know what he’s taken because he doesn’t  _care_  enough to deduce it, the pill was white and round and he liked it, so he took more, and more, and more, not enough to kill him, not even enough to really  _hurt_ , but  _enough_ , but the world bleeds out grey and his hands shake, or they don’t, it’s hard to tell, and the world is grey, no longer green and black and dark, dark brown, opium in the air and a leather-bound book in his hands and dark glasses with wire rims on his face, gone gone gone, so he sleeps in his bed, in Watson’s bed, the same thing, sleeps and when he wakes there is no gas lamp outside, but is that because he can’t see beyond his shaking hands,  _or_.  
  
  
  
  
“You know why I’m here,” says Mycroft Holmes, and his brother pulls the blankets up, shakes Mycroft’s hands away, says, “Of course I do, but you presume that I  _care_.”  
  
“Then you know you have to stop,” says Mycroft, his hand on his brother’s, and Holmes snorts, says, “Yes, I know that a case without answers is a case that has to end.”  
  
“The  _pills_ , Sherlock,” says Mycroft, his eyes burning, “I don’t care one jot about the postcards, stop taking the  _pills_.”  
  
“I can’t,” says Holmes, knocking his brother’s hand away, sharply, and Mycroft looks at him, just long enough for it to be uncomfortable, (if you weren’t  _them_ , if staring wasn’t the universal language of the Holmes’, an eternal constant only they can translate), sighs, and shuts the door behind him.  
  
  
  
  
Mrs Hudson barely looks different, is the funny thing, her steel-grey hair in a tight and intricate bun, her dress light blue and a little faded, the same look in her eyes, you have been weighed and measured and most  _definitely_  found wanting, and he smiles when he sees her, because if she is not so changed then perhaps this won’t hurt as much as he thought it would, perhaps Mycroft in starched collars and Watson with a revolver in his belt won’t destroy him, perhaps when he looks down to mud beneath his feet and a cravat around his neck that isn’t his, it won’t be the end, won’t be  _it_ , but he’s wrong,  _oh_ , how he knows he’s wrong.  
  
  
  
  
“I love you,” says Watson, “I love you, whatever it is you’ve done.”  
  
His hand is around Holmes’ wrist, where there is a wristband, again, is that seven times, now, or eight, or  _more_ , and Holmes smiles, just a little, says, “I know, old boy. That’s the trouble.”  
  
  
  
  
Their flat is the next to go, the flat and all of London, now no longer in dribs and drabs but everything,  _everywhere_ , the underground a steampunk nightmare and bullet holes in their wall, match-girls on corners and a bulldog only he can see chewing at their carpet, the kitchen full of glass beakers and their bedroom has a fire that burns, crackling, all through the night, the street children know his name and ladies in pristine lace move away from him on the pavement, the bobbies watch him with narrowed eyes and their hands on their belts, and there are curtains, thick and velvet, to hide behind in the mornings, when Watson comes downstairs, rubbing at his eyes, saying, “God, I’m glad we never bought a television, is the microwave on the blink again, have you checked, yet?”  
  
  
  
  
“You have to take them, this time,” says Watson, and Holmes puts his head in his lap, says, “I shall say yes, as I say every time, and you will say, you always say that, and I will say, yes, I know.”  
  
“Well, if you’re going to have the conversation without me,” says Watson, trying to push Holmes’ head away, and Holmes digs his fingers into Watson’s thighs, a silent plea, and he stays, his hand in Holmes’ hair, all the promise he’s ever going to get in the patterns of Holmes’ fingers moving in swirling circles over his jeans.  
  
  
  
  
He takes them, because things can hardly get worse, and then they do, there’s something, something he can’t-- there’s snow on the ground again, snow and it’s so, so cold, and if Sherlock Holmes is mythology then he is not alone on the streets of London, not the only legend out there in the dark, there’s something,  _someone_ , else, just outside the corner of his eye, something hell-bound, something with half a face and a butcher’s knife, and if he could just follow those footsteps, if he could just catch the edge of the cloak that flutters in front of him, turning the corner at Dorset Street-- but some myths, like Sherlock Holmes, can never die, and it’s always just out of reach, the tatters of a crinoline dress floating on the wind, there’s blood on his boots and it isn’t his, a smile under a gas lamp that has too many teeth, but some criminals are never meant to be caught, not even by Sherlock Holmes, so he’s left with chalk on his hands and a dead woman’s name on his lips and precious little else, on a street corner in Spitalfields, running after the one man he’s never going to catch, run ragged and still never catching up-- and never, ever will.  
  
  
  
  
“I should really tell you to get down from there,” says Watson, as Holmes climbs on a street lamp outside the British museum, his scarf straggling free, and around them, young women with bustles and young men with pristine leather gloves eye each other up and do not speak, for they have not been properly introduced, young men and young women that Watson walks through like the snowflakes that fall around them, and Holmes says, “Really, darling, it should be  _you_  up here and me down there, something about angels and demons, I don’t know, I really should have smoked before we went out, nicotine always makes things clearer, doesn’t it?”  
  
“That almost made sense,” says Watson, but he lets Holmes use his arm to get down, anyway.  
  
  
  
  
Mycroft is dark and sharp in his new, ( _his old_ ), clothes, his collar a high and perfect line, a crimson waistcoat and a gold pocket-watch that must have cost a working man’s yearly wages or more, a silver ring on his hand, a curling skull, his top hat black and lined with satin as red as blood, only his smile, in the end, is still the same, polite and bland and  _deadly_  for it, a walking stick in hand, topped with the same skull that winds around his index finger; Mycroft walks like power, like parliament, like  _empire_ , more at home in the smog and the rattling of stagecoaches and the endless, endless noise than Lestrade, Mrs Hudson, even  _Irene_ , Mycroft was born to this, to the death and the smoke and the battle of this urban life, mud on his shoes, a blade inside his walking stick, and a mind inside sharper still, Mycroft was a man born to be a king, and now he is an agent of chaos and empire and the Queen, and in his brother’s eyes, dark and wide and  _knowing_ , it is much the same.  
  
  
  
  
“I think we need to move,” says Watson, as twenty postcards fall onto the floor from their little postbox in the downstairs hall, and Holmes says, “He’d find us, old boy.”  
  
“Oh, he’s a  _he_  now, is he?” says Watson, “We probably should just give up and give him a name. Like a stray cat, or a plant, if you’re renting from someone boring.”  
  
“I already know his name,” says Holmes, running his hands over the cards, blank but for that eternal, omnipresent  _M_ , and Watson snorts, says, “Yeah, well, thanks for deigning to tell  _me_.”  
  
“Moriarty,” says Holmes, “his name is James Moriarty.”  
  
“Damn,” says Watson, his head thunking back against the wall, his arms folded, “I was hoping it’d be something shit. He’s too much a nuisance to be a real nemesis, isn’t he?”  
  
  
  
  
He sits, mumbling, in Latimer Road station, he feeds the pigeons in Hyde Park, he walks past windows with lace curtains and Aspidistras on their windowsills, dollymops with toothless smiles wave to him in Whitechapel, coppers learn his name and learn his face and Scotland Yard is in Whitehall Place and much the same, and there are always eyes on him, inside, outside, at the door, and that’s not different, either, is it, and Watson walks beside him still, throws chips to the birds, shouts at traffic, slips his hand into the crook of Holmes’ elbow, and Watson hasn’t changed, unshaven in his leather jacket and a Sex Pistols t-shirt, but he blurs at the edges, sometimes, too fast for even Sherlock Holmes to follow, and it keeps him awake at night, as horses clopclopclop outside, for if Watson changes than he cannot be far behind, and it wouldn’t matter, then, anyway, because nothing would.  
  
  
  
  
A raven, its coat glossy against the snow, pecks by Holmes’ feet, and he says, “So many people have died here.”  
  
“Yes,” says Watson, eating his sandwich, in the shadow of the Tower, “you do always seem to feel so disturbingly at home in places where there’s been lots of  _death_.”  
  
  
  
It’s December, maybe,  _maybe_ , and the postcards still come, always signed in green, no ink-blots on the pages, just that copperplate handwriting, eerie in its perfection, and the boys who bring the post, eight or nine years old, their knees scuffed, (and bring more to Holmes besides), they come and go, but the postcards come and keep coming, scenes of Our Saviour, of cherubim and seraphim, once, the Archangel Michael, his foot on Satan’s neck, his flaming sword in hand, and he loiters in shop doorways, his pipe in his hand, a bottle of something stronger than mere ethanol in his pocket, and there is something,  _someone_ , always one step behind him, but he turns, and turns, and turns, but they’re never there, just a drop of blood on the pavement, or is it green ink, or-- something has haunted him since Whitechapel, and he wants to know because he  _always_  wants to know, but he knows he shouldn’t, knows he shouldn’t turn, because it hasn’t been there yet, but there’s a knife, and a neck, and they might meet, might be  _his_.  
  
  
  
  
“It’s Christmas Eve tomorrow,” says Watson, “that means you have to tell your brother you hate him, at the very least.”  
  
“I’ll send him a telegram,” mutters Holmes, writing on their windows with a paintbrush and thick red paint, and Watson raises an eyebrow, says, “All right, H.G. Wells, tell me where you parked your time machine and I’ll be right back.”  
  
“Very droll,” says Holmes, completely dry, and outside the gas lamps flicker on.  
  
  
  
  
Mycroft finds him at Edgeware Road, a firm hand in a leather glove on Holmes’ shoulder, and they’re walking through the streets as people part before them, women with powder-pale faces and men with the same identical blank eyes, but even they recognise Mycroft for what he is, money and danger and so much  _power_ , step aside, clumsy, and the pickpockets know without trying that they could not hope to christen Mycroft’s watch, his watch-chain, his rings, and Holmes looks down at his feet, at battered Converse that were once blue, and clings to that until he can cling no more, for Mycroft has fur at his throat and his cheekbones are sharper and his eyes more green and crueller than he’s ever seen them, and he thought he could, but he can’t, can he, so,  _so_.  
  
  
  
  
“The newspaper says they found another body,” says Watson, “another sex-worker, God, Lestrade must be going off his rocker.”  
  
“They won’t catch him,” says Holmes, flat on his back on their sofa, staring at their ceiling, at their pockmarked walls, and Watson chuckles and sits down on the floor beside his head, says, “But  _you_  will, I presume?”  
  
“Well, now,” says Holmes, as the candle by his elbow flickers, “I didn’t say  _that_.”  
  
  
  
  
It was inevitable, he knows, waking up to find his all clothes gone, nothing left in the wardrobe but velvet and corduroy and wool and fur, (Mycroft’s touch all over that, he knows), a trilby hanging on the bedframe, a ring with Watson’s name inscribed inside on his finger, a cross of silver hanging around his neck, a cross of silver that he’s never seen before, but for one that hangs, just like it, as his brother’s collar bar, and he knows, now, truly  _knows_ , as he looks in the mirror, his fingers round the cross, his hair different but wild, still, his eyes, too, still dark, and the circles beneath them, too, that this is it, no going back, follow your spirit and upon this charge, that London’s got beneath his skin for good, beneath his skin and heart and fingernails, and he cannot hope to ever root it out, wouldn’t even know where to  _begin_.  
  
  
  
  
“Another one,” says Watson, and it is January now, a killer still uncaught and the snow in the streets turned to slush, and Watson has a postcard between his thumb and index finger, and there is green ink under a blue sky as Holmes says, “The fire, old boy, for that one, too.”  
  
“We don’t have--” says Watson, and stops, halfway to locking their outer door, “Hmm, stupid thing to say, there’ll be one whether I thought there was one or not, eh?”  
  
“Yes,” says Holmes, his walking stick in hand and his frame-wire sunglasses on, “there will.”  
  
  
  
  
This, too, was inevitable, the wool suit and the heavy overcoat, the gun in the belt and the shined brown shoes, he  _knows_  it was, but when Watson looks at him that first time, with a moustache that was not there the night before and his sleeves rolled up and his braces hanging down, it is still hard to smile, it is still hard to touch his face, a familiar gesture, and find new scar tissue there and the scar tissue he knew, he  _treasured_ , vanished, harder still when Watson’s shirt slips and reveals the map on his shoulder gone, the lines and landmarks of Sherlock Holmes’ heart lost to the ether as if it was never there at all, but John Watson is Sherlock Holmes’ heart, the cartography of London and London below and of the soul of Sherlock Holmes, John Watson is still there, smiling at him, so it can’t be  _yes_  but it can’t be  _no_ , but something in between, a place Sherlock Homes has never been, somewhere he isn’t sure John Watson can follow, or even that he’d lead him there if he could, to the London below London, to the heart he isn’t sure he has or how to find, not now, not here, not  _when_.  
  
  
  
  
“There’s another one,” says Watson, a poker in his hand, the postcard on the sideboard, hot ash on their carpet, and Holmes scratches Gladstone behind the ears, says, “I’ll be back in an hour or two, old chap.”  
  
“Wipe your feet this time!” Watson calls after him, “It was murder getting that clay out of the carpet, honestly."  
  
  
  
  
Victoria is almost empty, too late for trains to run and the bottle is in his pocket, the same white pills, the same greygrey sky, and he turns it over and over in his hand, inside this bottle lies redemption or death, same thing or not he’s not quite sure, and he swallows, and swallows, and swallows, the taps all turned on, in Victoria Station toilet, a waterfall cascade of noise, seems overwhelming, but then, he knows not seems, something is rotten in the state of Denmark, and he was born to set it right, and the sinks overflow and his hands are shaking and the pills are still so, so white, because there’s green ink on his hands and there has been for many winters now, green ink under his fingernails and stamps inside his skull, and Watson always smiled at him, and, and.  
  
  
  
  
“Don’t you dare die on me, you bastard!” shouts Watson, jingling change at a turntable entrance, giving up and flinging the coins at the wall, vaulting over, and Holmes looks up, and up, at Watson’s eyes, and he  _knows_ , and he changes his prayer to  _die before I wake_  to  _let him wake me before I die_ , and Watson says, “Don’t you fucking dare, you absolute  _wanker_ \--”  
  
  
  
  
The world doesn’t melt back to normal, there’s still a cravat around his neck and a cross so cold it burns, and Watson’s mouth is opening and closing, opening and closing, and his heartbeat’s in his ears, the rhythmic running of a London train, because London is still London, London is London is London, and Holmes shuts his eyes, and--  
  
  
  
  
\--it feels, he finds, a lot like falling.


End file.
